TextEdit is useful because it is readable by every OS X user. The GUI is not ready for setting background colors of lines and text, but it is possible to set the background color using the Styles pop-up menu. But first, you'll need to enrich the styles with the RTF provided freely here: BackColor for TextEdit [1.3KB]

[robg adds: Here's a bit more info on how to make this work. Download the above file and open it in TextEdit. Select any of the color formatted exmaple words (i.e. the white-on-black word), click the Styles pop-up, and then click Other. In the next scree that opens, click Add to Favorites, then enter a name ("Black bacgkround") and click Add. When you open a new document (in RTF mode, obviously), you'll be able to see and use the newly-created styles. There's also a bit of info in the sample document itself on how you can create your own styles, but I didn't try that.]

I'm not sure I understand this hint... TextEdit has always had the ability to set the background and font colors. Open up the Font panel (command+T) and make sure the "effects" pane is visible by clicking on the gear icon in the lower left corner. TextEdit also does lovely shadows.

The author of the hint doesn't speak English as their native language, and perhaps I did a bad job in the editing. But here's what I think the point is: yes, TextEdit will let you change the background color for the document. But you can't have, for instance, a section of white-on-black text followed by a section of green-on-blue text.

This hint will let you do this, by saving those colored blocks as custom styles. In my testing, I couldn't figure out how to get TextEdit to save the background information with a style; it just saved font size, family, color, etc.

Bad news : this is not fully supported by the system (yet ?)... try to copy and paste the text of the sample file into the body of a new mail : some colors are lost, others are unexpectedly expanded to entire lines.

More infos about this hints
Authored by: Michel_X on May 28, '05 06:12:43AM

The purpose of this hints is only to edit share (funny and with word or line back colored) rtf readable by every MacOSX users. The comments of FredBlon can be completed by the following observation about the system: The favorite Styles are not in a pref file attached to textEdit but in the unvisible .GlobalPreferences.plist xml file. With caution, it is possible to edit this file with the Property List Editor (tag NSFavoriteStyles) i.e. to suppress an unwanted Styles created during the tests. Discovered by a copy/paste from a html page, I agree : not all the background color are copied... it is why - as explained at the end of the attached doc ot the hints- to create the range of colors - it is necessary to use bbedit to edit and modify a reference rtf containing a range of colors and progressively complete the styles menu.